A forensic expert today revealed how the horrors of handling bodies from the Boxing Day tsunami left him scarred for life and drove him to suicide.

David Collins, from Consett, County Durham, won a £465,000 legal battle nearly 10 years after being deployed on the disaster-hit coastline of Sri Lanka in 2004.

The 45-year-old worked 16-hour days managing a mortuary and branded the experience as a “production line of bodies” after 98ft waves ravaged the shoreline and claimed the lives of nearly 230,000 people.

Now - after Irwin Mitchell helped him win a compensation battle with employers from the National Policing Improvement Agency - David has re-lived his harrowing experience of identifying and fingerprinting hundreds of victims.

David, who was one of the UK’s leading forensic experts on disaster zones and even wrote Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) guidelines, revealed how he was charged with identifying victims of the western world.ave now admitted they had breached the duty of care they owed him in failing to refer him to occupational health on his return from Sri Lanka.

Womans ward at Kinniya hospital, Sri Lanka, January 2005

He spent six weeks in the Sri Lanka capital, Colombo, where he examined bodies and ran a mortuary. In the month before his arrival, local police forces had been forced to bury the dead in a bid to preserve their bodies.

The dad-of-two, who worked with Durham Constabulary for nine years before taking up a role as a forensic advisor, was based near the British Embassy but was left wracked with guilt as he helplessly told loved ones of Sri Lankan victims he could not help them.

He said: “When we first arrived the Americans and the Dutch were there with helicopters and planes. We made an 11-hour drive to the city of Galle in these white UN-style jeeps. It was just a scene of total devastation. We were driving past roads that looked like paradise but then the smell hit you. It was like a mass grave.

“A lot of my trauma and a lot of my nightmares was because we were there to exhume bodies and identify people who were not Sri Lankan. A lot of my issues were because of the guilt.

“I did hundreds of post-mortems on people with Durham Police and it was a very, very sterile environment. But in Colombo we were defrosting bodies in the street before carrying out post-mortems.

“There were a lot of Sri Lankan families crying and grabbing my clothes, they were trying to see if we knew where there families were. Listening to them cry was part of my nightmares and flashbacks. I felt like I was lying to them.”

Grandmother Sahila Jay who abandoned her grand daughter to escape the Boxing Day tsunami in Sri Lanka, 2004

He added: “I wrote the exit strategy with another police officer. There were 58 bodies that were potentially not Sri Lankan that we couldn’t identify so we had to bury them. I felt like those people were just forgotten.”

Despite witnessing the full horrors of the disaster his employers failed to give him a debrief on his return to the UK and he broke down with post-traumatic stress disorder.

David said: “I didn’t know the effect it was having on me. I was working purely on adrenaline and you felt very special because you felt you were saving the world. When you got a hit on DNA or fingerprints you felt fantastic - that was closure for the family of a missing victim. But when I got back my life just went in a downward spiral.”

On the anniversary of the disaster, on December 26, 2010, David tried to take his own life. When he was found at the rear of Consett Police Station with a noose around his neck it prompted him to get help.

He said: “It’s been a long six years seeking help but I’m much better now. I nearly lost my house, my wife, my kids, everything.

“I’m so proud that they stuck with me and I’ve got them back now. I used to be really, really angry but now I know I can’t have the bitterness to move on.

Isobel Lovett, a specialist workplace illness solicitor who represented David from Irwin Mitchell’s Newcastle office, said: “Mr Collins’ life has been turned upside down by his experiences in Sri Lanka, when he should have been given more help by his employer to minimise the risk of PTSD and its impact on his life. He has lost a career he loved.”

Record pay out to police worker

David Collins’ compensation payment, one of the biggest made to a police worker, was so large that it had to be listed in the Home Office’s annual accounts, published last week.

In the section on losses and special payments, it stated: “A compensation payment of £464,000 was paid by the College of Policing in respect of an employee who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.”

At the time of his employment David was employed by Centrex, an agency which no longer exists.

The forensic elements of Centrex were moved into the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) and subsequently to the College of Policing in December 2012 which was established as the professional body for policing.

A College of Policing spokeswoman said: “UK policing often assists international police forces by providing policing specialists to assist in training and on occasions operational responses.

“In 2005, the Home Office put together a deployment of policing experts to help in the response to the Sri Lankan tsunami. The contingency deployed included forensic experts, including David Collins, who was employed by Centrex at the time.

“Following a review of the 2005 deployment the College of Policing recognises that there were matters Centrex could have dealt with better, including post-incident support. The College has negotiated, in good faith, an arrangement that should see Mr Collins receive the treatment and support he needs to recover from his injuries and lead an active life.

“As an organisation that has unique skills and the ability to deploy those skills on demand anywhere in the world, there are always likely to be associated risks with such deployments.

“However, we recognise there are lessons to be learned from this unique deployment and as the new professional body for policing we will ensure that any learning is applied to future deployments of this kind.”